


Plasters

by StarLadder



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet-ish, Little angsty thing, Post-Episode: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4814666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarLadder/pseuds/StarLadder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe rips the bandages off too soon, and the Doctor doesn't know what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plasters

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've ever dared post. I know it's short but I thought, it's Fanfic Writers' Day, what the hell?

“Plasters”

The Doctor’s life seemed to run in series of final chapters, a “hellos” existing only to one day reach “goodbyes.” They all felt like sinkholes in his skin, punches to the weakest points of him. He was battered and old and ruined, yet every time unprepared. As each of his friends left, they gouged out larger and larger pieces from his hearts, but he was never ready to deal with the same old ending to the same old story no matter the number of repeats. And this particular goodbye...it was indescribable, the way it burned. His chest hurt. He was nothing more than the sum of his grief. _Human grief,_ he thought. This was human grief.

(But the rest of him was Time Lord, and his excessively efficient body would not allow him the good graces of human fallibility. His two hearts thumped on even when he wished they wouldn’t and ignored his plea for silence.)

This was ripping off a plaster too soon and too fast, the void and the longing erupting from his veins. The acidity of his blood corroded with its bitterness, a burning out from the inside that began stripping away everything his powerful Rose had done to improve him.

All the Doctor wanted to do was cry, curled up like a child on a pink bed, in a dark room, gripping the duvet that carried her familiar scent. How could someone have so much faith in him, believe in him that much to leave everything behind? He had been fooled into sweet and genuine hope that he could accept truth in the promises sprung from human lips, that forever _meant something._ He had believed too hard in her as well, because in the end nothing changed. She lied; forever together was a dead dream.

_But it didn't matter anymore,_ he supposed. Faith was something for the past. He couldn’t hold her accountable for the laws of nature.

He was too busy being sad. Missing her. But this was probably what he deserved, right? All these consuming _feelings_ were penance for his past. Why grant happiness to a murderer if not to kill _him_ with it? The jaws of emotion clamped tighter around his miraculous body, more tears dripping onto the soft pillow where she used to rest her head. He was supposed to be remorseless, just like the rest of his people. He was supposed to be invincible and detached. Life wasn’t supposed to touch him. Oh, but he’d gone and let it in and it gave him Rose. Her smile made him lighter; her name made him strong. There was nothing he couldn’t do with Rose Tyler beside him.

But she was gone now, and the Doctor wasn’t a miracle anymore.

He fell asleep to gentle thoughts of her before his dreams turned them sour. He saw blood on his hands, seeping out from the life lines on his palms and spilling over into indefinite whiteness. It wasn’t his; he knew this instinctively. It belonged to someone he'd watched die, or someone he'd killed. _It had to._ But she was there, close in front of him, drawing nearer, blind to the red sickness saturating his fingers. Never doubting, never faltering. She smiled at him. He stared, trying to etch the trust he saw in those beautifully framed eyes into his mind forever but failing to understand why she'd chosen to love him. Him, the one she found hardened, the one she’d broken down in a slow way by creating gateways in his unforgiving exterior before he could detect them. Solvation of the hearts.

(White walls could not solvate.)

She came so near that her hands were close enough to touch, and in the next moment their fingers laced together, like always. But his burden, the blood of his dead coated her skin, and he woke up disgusted with himself and calling out for her.

_Rose?_

_Rose!_

He was that very young, lost child again, his little boy voice beckoning to no one, his grown up fingers cradling her blanket close to his chest. He waited, but nobody answered him. No feet pounding down the hall, no soft words, no warm arms to hold him together. His aching soul went uncared for. 

_I’m all alone._

The universe had ripped the plasters off his bleeding knees and elbows and hands and hearts and _everywhere._ His vision blurred once more with stinging tears, and the Doctor closed his eyes, clinging to the memory of the last thing keeping him alive:

_She loved me. She really did._


End file.
